The French state continues to deny responsibility in the chlordecone scandal, after authorising the use of the pesticide for years in banana plantations in Martinique and Guadeloupe. RFI met with several victims who are calling those responsible to account and seeking compensation.
The French state has recently filed an appeal against the decision of a Paris court of 11 March, which ruled that the state should compensate people who have been exposed to chlordecone.
The move has angered victims in the French overseas departments of Martinique and Guadeloupe.
"I used to make boxes to pack bananas and stick the labels on," said one woman, who has always lived among the banana plantations in Martinique, a few steps from the warehouse where she worked.
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Every day she handled bananas treated with chlordecone by the hundreds, she told RFI.
"My fingers swelled up, my fingers and thumbs became deformed. It was after the occupational doctor came and I showed him my hands. He told me I couldn’t continue working."
She continued: "And then one day, when I was going shopping with my children, I said to my daughter 'I can’t see anything at all'. And the doctor said I needed immediate surgery."
An emergency operation prevented the damage from spreading to her brain, but she lost her sight. Today, she is demanding accountability from those responsible and asking for further treatment.
"I want to get my eyes back and for justice to know that it was the chlordecone that did this to me," she said.
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Workers say no one spoke to them about the dangers of chlordecone.
Another woman remembers her years working in the banana plantations. She says that workers were given a bucket to spread fertiliser and pesticides by hand, without any protection or explanation.
"One day, I arrived in the middle of the fields, and I felt something was really wrong. Dizziness, weakness, trembling. And I collapsed with the bucket," she recalled.
"They need to admit that they poisoned us. When I call all my friends, all my aunts, all my cousins, everyone is dying because of that poison they used. I'm asking for justice."
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"I carry all the rage of the people from Martinique, and this rage is directed at the state and at the poisoners... because they did this intentionally, they already knew," said Yvan Sérénus, president of the group of agricultural workers poisoned by pesticides.
Chlordecone has been classified as a carcinogen by the World Health Organization since 1979 and was banned in the United States in 1977.
In the French Caribbean, it continued to be used until 1993, despite being officially banned in 1990 in mainland France.
Today, more than 90 percent of the adult population in Guadeloupe and Martinique has been contaminated by chlordecone, according to France's public health body.
This report was adapted from RFI's podcast Reportage France, produced by Jeanne Richard.
